


Upper-Level Management

by Beatrice_Otter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Labor, Female-Centric, Feminist Themes, Gen, POV Female Character, Superheroes, gen - Freeform, superhero wrangling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:48:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6108487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/pseuds/Beatrice_Otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, she promised herself.  One day she would once again have a job that did <em>not</em> include babysitting men who were theoretically grown adults.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upper-Level Management

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



> betaed by crossing_hades

This was, by far, the least favorite part of Maria's job with Stark Industries. She and Pepper got along _great_ ; their normal business interactions were smooth and effective, and they got together for drinks at least once a month. Normal meetings with Pepper were fine.

Well. _These_ meetings happened often enough to count as "normal," too, Maria supposed, but she refused to consider superhero ego wrangling a regular part of her job. On principle.

SHIELD had had more than its share of alpha-dick posturing, but there she'd had minions to handle most of it and had, for the last several years, outranked any alpha-dick in her daily contact. (Nick Fury was not a perfect man, and she knew his flaws far better than anyone including the media outlets and political spin-doctors currently tearing apart his legacy, but testosterone poisoning wasn't one of them.)

Tony Stark, however, was different. He wasn't her boss, but he was the majority stockholder in the corporation she was now an employee of. And if he wasn't exactly your _standard_ alpha-dick, the chip on his shoulder and the sheer self-centered willingness to use his power for his own pleasure regardless of the consequences more than made up for it. Mix that with Steve Rogers' own brand of self-righteous hot-headedness, and clashes were frequent and epic. They were friends, Maria supposed, but this latest round was not the first episode of Starkian bullshit that Steve was simply not going to put up with.

"I've given him Doctor Foster's latest paper on Einstein-Rosen Bridges," Pepper said. "That should distract him, at least for a little bit. I don't think I'll be able to get him to apologize, but at least he won't be digging the hole any deeper."

"He's an engineer, not a physicist," Maria said. "I'd think sending him to play with Doctor Banner would be more helpful in distracting him."

Pepper shook her head. "Bruce is focusing on biology at the moment, which is the least interesting to Tony of all the sciences. Doctor Foster's latest paper, on the other hand, includes descriptions of and speculation about the physical interface used by the Asgardians to control the Rainbow Bridge."

"Enough for Tony to think about trying to build one himself?" Maria asked with some alarm. She didn't think he could, but she'd been wrong about Stark before … and even if he failed, there were a lot of dangerous possibilities in mucking around with that sort of thing. What if he opened up, say, a random portal to something even worse than the Chitauri? Or just to a planet with a toxic atmosphere that might spill over to Earth? Any of those would be far worse for the team, for Stark Industries, and the world than the latest Stark/Rogers spat.

"No," Pepper said, "it's still well out of our technological range, even theoretically, and the materials needed would be expensive enough even Tony couldn't pull them out of pocket change. He'd need to draw on Stark Industries resources."

"Good," Maria said. "That's about as settled as Tony will get, it'll have to do."

Pepper grimaced. "I'm hoping I can impress on him _not_ to do anything like it ever again, but you never know with Tony. What about Steve? Can you get Natasha to bring him around?"

Maria frowned herself. She _hated_ this, that it had somehow—"somehow"—become the job of Pepper, Maria, and Natasha—the woman in the Avengers and the two women closest to the team—to manage the egos of the male teammates. But there was no denying that Natasha's skills were unparalleled at manipulating men, even men who knew she was doing it. "She's out of the country for the next few weeks, that Latverian thing," Maria pointed out.

"Oh, of course," Pepper said. "How's she doing?"

"Her last check-in was fine," Maria said. "If anyone can get out with the intel, it's her, but Doom's a lot smarter than people give him credit for. And Latveria was a tough nut to crack even before Doom took over."

"You're sure it's one of Doom's projects?" Pepper asked. "I would have thought that HYDRA was far more likely to have their tentacles there than anywhere else."

"Why, because Latveria's been a totalitarian regime at odds with America for so long?" Maria said. "People in totalitarian regimes don't tend to romanticize them, which cuts out a lot of the attraction of the 'order through strength' bullshit. And Doom has never been one to allow a cult for anyone's personality but his own. When he took over from the Communists, the purge was remarkably thorough, and he's kept tight reigns ever since. Those drones—or whatever the hell they are—look to be home-grown Doom products. When she gets back, her report will probably interest Tony on many levels."

"All to the good," Pepper said. "When he's working on an engineering problem, he has a lot less time to go around pissing off his teammates. That still leaves Steve, though. _Does_ he need to be handled?"

Maria shrugged. "If Tony would apologize? No. Steve's a fairly even-keeled and forgiving guy … as long as people apologize. He thinks someone's being a bully, though, and he'll never let it go. And he's got a memory like an elephant." In their time together at SHIELD, she'd found Steve a joy to work with: polite, genuinely respectful, and with a low tolerance for sexist crap that cut down on the amount that made it to her level. (She gave Director Carter all the credit for the last one.) But his dedication to justice over pragmatism did get in the way sometimes.

"It would be so much easier if we could buy Steve's forgiveness with a Picasso or a Matisse," Pepper said. That had, actually, been a (small) part of the fight, Tony's tendency to try to buy friendship. "How about Mr. Wilson? Can he do something to smooth things over?"

"Maybe," Maria said, considering. "But if I asked him, he'd say something about being Steve's friend, not his therapist, and how that wouldn't be his job even if he _was_ Steve's therapist. In any event, he's down in DC at his day job for the next month or two, barring any emergencies." She thought some more. Steve always responded best to teammates and comrades-in-arms. She counted, but soothing the male ego was a skill she'd taken care _not_ to develop. And besides, as a Stark Industries employee, Steve would hardly see her as neutral. Thor wasn't on-planet this month, and they didn't know when he'd be back. "It can't be Banner," she mused.

"No," Pepper said, with a shudder at the idea of putting Bruce's fragile control between him and Steve. Absent outside influences, Banner was a lot more in control than he thought he was. But there was no point in taking chances. And when Steve got in a self-righteous snit he could try the patience of a saint.

"Clint's supposed to be back on the East Coast next week," Maria remembered. "I can ask him to take Steve out for a drink, commiserate with him about assholes in general. It should help some for Steve to get it off his chest, at least."

"Hawkeye as therapist," Pepper murmured. "The mind boggles. No disrespect to Agent Barton, of course."

"It's not his greatest skill-set," Maria admitted, "but even if it doesn't fix things between Steve and Tony, it should help Steve's relations with Clint." Not that there were any problems there, but Maria was a great believer in being proactive. Teamwork didn't happen by accident, and when the 'team' was as spread out as this one, anything that brought them together was a good thing. Unless it resulted in another round of Steve and Tony's bickering.

"Well, it'll have to do," Pepper said. She glanced at her phone. "And on that note, I have a conference call with one of our Japanese distributors."

"Right," Maria said. "See you tomorrow." She gathered up her materials and went back to her _actual_ job as head of Stark Industries' security. One day, she promised herself. One day she would once again have a job that did _not_ include babysitting men who were theoretically grown adults.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [dreamwidth](http://beatrice-otter.dreamwidth.org/) and [tumblr](http://beatrice-otter.tumblr.com/).


End file.
